Food Stories: The Incident of the Jackets

As we left our apartment to take our son to his ride to school recently, my wife asked him whether he leaves a tie in his locker at school, just in case.  His school has a strict dress code—ties are required of boys most days.  For some reason, the question reminded me of something else entirely, and just as we arrived on the first floor, I said to him “Did I ever tell you…?” But I never got to finish the story. Back in the day, when restaurants often required jacket and ties “for gentlemen”, spare jackets and ties were kept in the coatroom for guests who showed up without them.  Few restaurants have that requirement anymore, and this practice seems almost an historical curiosity.

One evening in the late 1960s or early 1970s, my family was having dinner at Le Biarritz, a French restaurant on West 57^thStreet, now closed.  It was not very expensive by today’s standards, but it was a real splurge for us—we tended toward more modest places.  So we dressed up.  Given the era, dressing up, for me at least, meant bellbottoms or boot cut jeans, a cowboy shirt, boots, and a leather jacket. Or the shirt might have been a purple collarless shirt, with three buttons down the front, of the kind that could be found at one of the hip clothing stores in the Village or elsewhere around town. My brother had his own variation on this. But that was not the least of it.  We both had very long hair—my brother’s thick and black and a bit wild, mine falling halfway down my back. Not the usual Biarritz customers at all. My parents were not happy with our look, to say the least, but had learned to deal with it. 

As we entered, the maître d’ took one look, distaste or disdain–I am not sure which—visibly registering on his face.  We thought we looked pretty good, but neither my brother nor I was wearing a suit jacket. When the maître d’ pointed this out to us, we expected that he would offer one of the usual non-descript black or blue blazers, elbows shiny from use, customarily kept for the purpose.  But no.  Instead, he held out two short red jackets, with brass buttons, the type sometimes worn by waiters or busboys in restaurants like Le Biarritz. I assume he thought it would embarrass us into leaving.  

He showed us to our table—a middle table toward the front of the restaurant.  If his goal was to drive us out, he achieved the opposite. To his almost perceptible dismay, we did not leave.  We put on the red jackets, sat down and proceeded to have our dinner, attracting the stares of everyone in the place.  Front and center, literally, with our red waiter’s jackets, taking our time over a forgettable meal.  Forgettable, that is, except for the jackets.

Well, this incident—the incident of the jackets–became part of our family restaurant lore, along with stories of my father’s collection of restaurant napkins, assembled on account of his tendency to walk out of restaurants with a napkin still tucked neatly in his waist or shirt, just where he left it. But I had forgotten about it, having long ago adopted both a higher comfort level with suits and jackets (I did spend a number of decades as a lawyer) and a more casual attitude toward dress, along with the times. Then we visited New Orleans.  

We had several good meals there and one great one—a lunch at Peche, one of those meals you want to eat everything on the menu.  The day after our Peche lunch, we happened by Galatoire’s, a New Orleans institution, just in time for lunch.  I was excited. The restaurant seemed dark and not terribly busy, so we approached the maître d’.  He looked at us—a look that seemed oddly familiar—and said we could not be seated.  I did not have a jacket.  We saw some jackets hanging in the cloakroom, so I asked if I could borrow one.  He said I could borrow a jacket, but we could still not be seated. My shirt—a particularly nice one, I thought–did not have a collar. The incident of the jackets came rushing back. 

This time, there was no way to stick around to eat indifferent food, just to spite the snooty maître d’. I would like to say we headed back to Peche for another really fabulous meal…but, no, we didn’t. I just groused about it for a while, annoyed, until we found friendlier surroundings, happy at least to have recalled an old family story.